Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Against Heterosexuality? Really?

Michael W. Hannon's article "Against Heterosexuality" seems to be making the rounds in gay Mormon social media. (Interesting enough, since the author is a prospective Catholic priest who builds a major part of his argument on the writings of French gay atheist and social critic Michel Foucault. That's probably the main reason this article is making the rounds.)

My
take on this is that you can't, in one breath, say: "Marriage is
ordained of God," or "we are all spirit sons and daughters of God," and
in the next breath talk about "the lie of essentialism." Religious
conservatives who want to use "social construction" theory as an
argument against same-sex marriage are sowing the wind. If anything it's proof that a new social consensus about homosexuality and same-sex
marriage is emerging, and they know it, because social construction
theory is best used as a wrecking ball to tear down a social consensus
you don't like. That's why sex radicals in the 1960s latched on to
social construction theory in the first place.

If
you wanted to consistently use social construction theory as a lens for
understanding current debates about sexuality and marriage, you would
be just as obliged to acknowledge this:

Individuals
who -- by a personal discernment process best described as sacred -- have recognized
themselves to be gay or lesbian, are brokering a
covenant with the broader society in which they agree to apply broadly
accepted ethical principles to their relationships, and the broader
society -- by democratic, constitutional means including electoral,
legislative, and judicial processes, also best described
as sacred -- are in the process of ratifying the proposed social
covenant, because they recognize that it is in the interests of the
greater good.